Pages

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Tuesday's Tip - SmartArt Excel ancestor graphic

I love Microsoft Excel...spreadsheets soothe my OCD mind. I use them a lot to manage my family history facts and files. I have recently gone nuts with the SmartArt graphic feature in Excel (a tool in all Microsoft Office products starting with the 2007 version). I use this feature to create the relationship graphic that I use in several posts.

The relationship graphic I created using SmartArt.

To create a SmartArt illustration in Excel, open a file and click on the insert tab. You'll see the SmartArt graphic in the Illustrations block.

Your click opens the SmartArt Graphic choice list. There are many options to choose from to illustrate various and a sundry concepts. For the graphic shown above I chose the "staggered process" option.

Click on your choice of graphic and it will be inserted in to your page with the default settings. You can adjust the colors, box shape and font through the SmartArt tools design tab.

To add or subtract boxes from your graphic simply right click on a box and scroll to "Add Shape."

There are endless options for how to customize the SmartArt graphic for your family research. You could change the colors to match your blog, or determine different colors for different family lines. You can use the Snipping Tool to use the graphic on your blog.

No matter how you customize it, I think you'll find that it is a handy option for adding information to your blog or helping to clarify your family research.

Also, check out this post at the Legal Genealogist to read her thoughts on using Microsoft graphics on your blog.

I've had Excel and Smart Art for a gazillion years but never gave a thought to how to actually use any of it (except for obvious things like creating a Christmas budget in Excel). I can't wait to see what you're going to show me next.

Thank you so much for the step by step. I have enjoyed how you use these graphics in your blog! I used your directions to make one of my own for a Sunday's Obituary post for tomorrow. I feel like my blog will have a cool factor to it now!

I have started a new blog hop - The History Hop - that allows history bloggers to link up their favourite posts every week

Blog hops provide an opportunity to share posts and to meet other bloggers and I'm hoping that the History Hop will provea great way to reach a wider audience and to meet other history bloggers of all sorts.